Personal Tracking – the insights so far

Ever since attending my first Quantified Self (QS) meet up six months ago, I have been inspired to track and measure many more aspects of my life.

Whilst I’ve always tracked a number of things, I’ve taken this personal tracking to a completely new level since the start of 2014.

I now have a morning ritual which doesn’t take me long to complete, but has given me some great insights into my good daily habits to build upon, as well as some less good ones to try to reduce.

I call the system the ‘Habit Tracker’ and this is how it works:

First thing every morning, I note down a number of things:

Mood (high/medium/low);

Sleep (quantity & quality);

Calories consumed;

Physical movement;

Time spent meditating

Green juice consumed;

Time spent in meetings;

Stress response incidents

Time spent learning

In terms of tools, I used a combination of traditional tools (big sheet of paper and pens) and technology (My FitnessPal for calories; Jawbone Up band for movement and sleep).

Based on the insights gained over the last couple of months, I’m now ready to start to run experiments to find out the relationship between different variables, like the impact of eating certain foods on my stress reactions. More about this in future posts.